


Lay Me Gently in the Cold, Dark Earth

by LourdesDeath



Series: Somewhere For This, Death and Guns [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Horror, Gore, Hozier, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 08:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4384997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LourdesDeath/pseuds/LourdesDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers is the only reason he’s digging himself out of his own grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lay Me Gently in the Cold, Dark Earth

**Author's Note:**

> Every time I listen to Work Song I get emotional over Bucky, so I decided to put my feels to good use.
> 
> “When my time comes around,  
> Lay me gently in the cold, dark earth,  
> No grave can hold my body down,  
> I’ll crawl home to her.”  
> -Hozier, [Work Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH7bjV0Q_44)
> 
> See end notes for further explanation of warnings.

The joints of his left arm creak as he digs. Dirt fills the gaps between the plates and jams the movements. His right arm is just as functional, stiff and aching from a lack of blood flow, but he can’t stop.

He doesn’t know how long he’s been there, shifting the soil a little at a time, but he knows the men are gone.

Why would they stay? They think the job is done.

His left side hurts from the fall, but he ignores it.

After all, he’s no stranger to pain.

Pain has been close to him since before his creation, since the time when he was a man—when he was a _person_.

His familiarity with pain is only surpassed by his familiarity with death. Death has been his only constant companion since he fell from a train and lost his humanity.

He thinks he can hear creatures around him, but the sounds are muffled. It would make things more difficult if there are animals around. They may think he is suitable prey, may try to consume him as the ground and the insects have tried. He doesn’t want to kill the animals, but animals are obstinate.

Blood and dirt coat his tongue, forcing him to remember the wounds he was given before he was put into the ground. Most of the damage was superficial, but they managed to overpower him enough to hold him down and shoot.

One bullet entered at the base of his skull and exited through his cheek, another pierced his heart, and a third was fired, point-blank, just above his eyebrows.

He knows from experience that failing to clean the wounds will result in maggots hatching inside him, consuming what should be dead tissue, but while he is trapped in this grave, he can do nothing but dig himself out.

The first time he died, when he fell from the train, he woke up to what remained of his left arm being in constant motion from the sheer number of insects that had infected it. The Soviets who found him had simply cut off the limb, rather than try to transport him in such a state.

Several experiments afterward had involved him being killed and the scientists observing its effects—or lack thereof—on his body.

At the time, they didn’t know the serum prevented a subject from dying.

He pauses when he realizes Johann Schmidt was a recipient of the serum. If he survived, he may pose a risk to the third person in whose veins flows the formula: Steve Rogers.

Steve Rogers is the only reason he’s digging himself out of his own grave. His final mission as a weapon of Hydra was the elimination of Steve Rogers, but things are different since he escaped Hydra’s clutches.

Steve Rogers is still his mission, but his orders changed—or reverted, rather—to their original parameters: protect Steve Rogers.

Currently, that means the destruction of Hydra at any cost to himself.

There’s more scratching in the dirt above him, and he fears he will be forced to fight off a wolf or bear.

He stills his hands.

His esophagus is filled with dirt, but asphyxiation is not a concern. His brain has received enough damage through electric shocks and repaired itself, and he has gone years without a breath in the past, when his body was frozen time and time again.

When he died again and again.

Death was his way of life.

It still is, but in a different way. Instead of dying again and again, he kills again and again. He has become Death to his former owners, a metal arm swinging in place of a scythe.

The movement on the surface has ceased, so he resumes his pursuit of freedom, fresh air and the land of the living.

If he was able to breathe, he would scoff at that.

He is alive, but he does not live.

James Buchanan Barnes, the man who became Hydra’s weapon after his mind had been wiped blank and his body had been torn apart, lived.

He stood beside Steve Rogers, beside Captain America, and fought to make the world safe, despite the ache inside him for home and peace and a time before his will had been broken, first by watching his friends and comrades being killed in battle, then by being played with like a toy owned by a wicked child.

James Buchanan Barnes stayed by his friend’s side, even though he missed the man his friend had been—not because he wished illness upon Steve Rogers, but because he no longer felt like an adequate shield, especially since Steve Rogers had been given a better shield, a metal one that could stay by his side better than a former POW with a knack for sniping.

James Buchanan Barnes died when he fell from a train to save his friend, but his body survived. James Buchanan Barnes cheated Death, but Death always collects its dues.

The dues owed to him will be paid, as well.

Hydra took everything from James Buchanan Barnes. But even worse than that, Hydra took away something that was precious to Steve Rogers. Hydra harmed Steve Rogers. Hydra was responsible for the first death of Steve Rogers.

He would make sure Hydra paid dearly for its sins.

Warmth touches his skin, and he wonders how close he is to the surface.

The dirt above him shifts and he freezes. Whatever is up there is close—close enough that he felt it brush against his right hand.

He waits for teeth to close around his wrist, but the touch that greets him is gentle, almost reverently so.

A voice speaks, but the words are lost to the earth between him and the speaker.

Two hands brush away the soil.

Before long, he is mostly uncovered and he risks opening his eyes.

It’s nighttime, but the sun is shining on him with its blue eyes and golden hair.

Steve Rogers was the world to the man who was James Buchanan Barnes.

Steve Rogers is the world to whoever he is now.

“Bucky?”

Those hands, which kept their length but have doubled in width, touch his face and warm his cold skin, feel the bullet holes.

Steve’s eyes grow wide with concern.

“I will heal,” he says before Steve can worry too much.

Fingers hover over the wound on his forehead.

“How?”

He inhales to respond when the breath catches in his throat. He coughs, his body trying to clear the dust from his throat.

Steve retrieves a canteen without leaving his side and presses it to his lips.

He tilts his head so the water won’t spill from the hole in his cheek; the water cleanses his airway the way the presence of Steve Rogers cleanses his soul, but he needs _more_. He needs to absolved of his sins.

Steve is holding him up and he can’t help staring at the man around whom he has gravitated since the moment they met, nearly a century ago. He can’t help thinking of every time he held a small body to his own, sometimes with their bodies tangled together in the purest of sins and others with him curled around a prone form, praying for Death to pass Steve Rogers by.

Every death Steve Rogers was spared passed over to James Buchanan Barnes, but he doesn’t begrudge Steve that. He would die a thousand times for Steve Rogers.

“I thought you were dead,” Steve whispers, and he remembers those words, remembers being pulled from the clutches of Death by a man who had become an angel.

“I thought you were smaller,” he replies, and he is treated to the most beautiful sight—the sight of Steve Rogers smiling.

He lifts his right hand to Steve’s cheek, curls his fingers around the back of Steve’s head, pulls him closer.

Steve Rogers yields to him, dips his head down until their lips touch.

He tastes of blood and dirt and decay, but Steve Rogers’ lips are sweet, sweeter than honey or syrup or the cotton candy they shared when they went to Coney Island.

James Buchanan Barnes died when he fell from a train to save his friend, but not even death could keep him from Steve Rogers.

It takes only one touch from Steve Rogers to bring him back to life, and he knows he will always live for Steve Rogers, knows he will never let Death fully take him until Steve Rogers allows it. Neither heaven nor hell can have his soul because his soul belongs to Steve Rogers.

James Buchanan Barnes became Death, but Steve Rogers has always been Life. 

**Author's Note:**

> Brief mentions of decaying, including maggots.
> 
> This was also inspired by 'In A Week' and 'Like Real People Do', both of which are also by Hozier.
> 
> I may write a B side "Bcause" B asked for one.
> 
>  
> 
> [my tumblr](http://lourdesdeath.tumblr.com/)


End file.
